The most accomplished painting ever to appear at auction by Russia’s greatest portrait painter of the reign of Catherine the Great, Dmitry Levitsky’s Portrait of Count Ilya Andreevich Bezborodko is also one of those rare instances for the Russian market where the provenance can be traced back to the family of the sitter. Exhibited at least three t.mes s before the Revolution, its fate after 1917 also gives a fascinating glimpse into how Russia’s treasures made their way to Europe.

Born into a family of Ukrainian Cossack nobility, Ilya Bezborodko was the younger brother of Alexander Bezborodko, one of Catherine II’s great statesmen and main architects of her foreign policy. Ilya Bezborodko entered military service at the age of fifteen and saw action in 1773-74 during the Russo-Turkish War. He moved up the ranks and in 1790 served under Alexander Suvorov, participating in the Siege of Ismail, for which he was decorated with the ribbon of St Anne and, on 25 March, the order of St George, 3^rd Class. On 2 September 1793 he received a golden rapier decorated with diamonds with the inscription ‘For bravery’. In 1795 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general. On 5 April 1797, the day of Paul I’s coronation, he was awarded the order of St Alexander Nevsky and the following year became an acting state counsellor and senator. In 1800 he was dismissed from service. A year earlier, his brother Alexander, who had been granted the title Prince by Paul I and made Chancellor of the Russian Empire, the highest rank at the t.mes , died, leaving Ilya his vast fortune.

Igor Grabar dated the present work to the late 1790s. Indeed, Ilya Andreevich is depicted in the uniform of the Knight of the Order of St Alexander Nevsky, wearing the badge of the order with diamonds and the order’s sash, which he had received in 1797. However, the presence of the bust of his brother (fig.2) suggests that the work was finished after the latter’s death in 1799. According to Liudmila Markina, it was painted before Ilya’s dismissal from service on 4 September 1800.

The first record of the work being shown in public dates from 1870, when it was included in an exhibition at the Society for the Encouragements of Artists in St Petersburg, and then again in 1902, when it was shown at an exhibition of Russian portraiture. Reproduced in the catalogue, it is listed as belonging to Countess Liubov Alexandrovna Musina-Pushkina, the great-granddaughter of the sitter (fig.3).

Presumably, the work had therefore stayed in the family, having been passed down via the sitter’s daughter Countess Liubov Ilichna Kusheleva (1783-1809), the heiress of her uncles’ vast fortune. Her portrait by Vladimir Borovikovsky, which incidentally features the same bust of Alexander Bezborodko as the present lot, was sold at auction in London in 2014. The painting would have then passed to her eldest son, Alexander Grigorievich Kushelev-Bezborodko, Liubov Musina-Pushkina’s father.

Still in her collects ion, the portrait was included in the important exhibition of Russian portraiture which the Ballets Russes impresario Sergei Diaghilev organized at the Tauride Palace in St Petersburg in 1905, and which took place under the patronage of Nicholas II. The work is clearly visible in a photograph taken at the exhibition (fig.4).

Presumably, the painting remained with Countess Musina-Pushkina until her death in 1917. Even then, during the years of Revolution and ensuing Civil War, not all traces were lost. According to Grabar’s list of works by Levitsky, it was sold by a certain Opochinin, an antique dealer in Moscow in 1920. From there, like so many other important works of art, it must have made its way to the West, as by 1928 it was included in the famous exhibition of Russian art in Brussels, lent by ‘M. E. Lubovich, Paris’ (fig.5)

Evgeny Liubovich, a Russian émigré, also had an important collects ion of Russian silver, much of which he acquired through Lev, or Léon Grinberg, an antiques dealer originally from Kiev and nephew of the founder of A La Vieille Russie, Jacques Zolotnitsky. Grinberg was one of an important network of dealers and auction houses selling treasures from Russia, often confiscated from palaces and sold off by the Soviet government for hard currency.

Liubovich appears to have acquired his Levitsky also from Grinberg, as the work and Liubovich’s name are mentioned in one of Grinberg’s ledgers now in a private collects ion. Interestingly Grinberg was also one of the organizers of the 1928 Brussels exhibition, together with Alexander Benois, who had also supported the 1905 Diaghilev exhibition and would therefore have already been familiar with the present work. The catalogue to the Brussels exhibition, the lenders list of which reads like the who's who of Russian émigré society, introduces Levitsky to the European Public as ‘the best Russian portraitist of the 18^th century’.

Liubovich, a true connoisseur whose collects ion of early Russian silver was sold at Replica Shoes ’s Zurich in 1978, certainly treasured his Levitsky. It hung above the fireplace in the smoking room at his château in Émancé near Paris, until after his death when it was sold with the rest of the château’s contents at auction in 1970 (fig.6).

Even though the portrait of Ilya Bezborodko had long left Russia, Soviet art historians in the second half of the 20^th century were aware of its existence and included it in their publications on the artist. Its quality, size, subject and impeccable provenance would make it an important addition to any serious collects ion of Russian art.

We would like to thank Professor Liudmila Markina for providing additional cataloguing information.